I am also never quite happy with the mantle. For several years I did a vintage Christmas village, as inspired by Alicia Paulson.

This was very popular with the children.

More recently I have been doing a garland and wreath but still not loving it. This year I added the sweetest little potted poinsettias, after learning last year, that unlike shown in many a magazine photo, they do not actually make very good cut flowers. Apparently they also don't made very good tiny plants, because mine died after two days. Pottery Barn to the rescue. I also got this pillow.

After seeing the letters made on Handmade Home, I made something similar with cardstock and microglitter.

This also meant that I went to church Wednesday evening with glitter stuck to my face.

Calmer heads prevailed as I walked past the very pretty smoky grey, glitter pontsettias, that were made all the more appealing when the man at Bachmans told me they were tradition in Europe, and bought white pointsettias instead. Some ended up here on our front entry table.

The pointsettias are litte ones tucked inside a painter's trough from Home Depot. I am pretty sure I stole this idea from Sarah Richardson, who is a genius. The bulbs are vintage and the filling for the basket is strips of my very favorite Amy Butler fabric.

The big one has started nordic skiing for her school this fall. So it occured to me, I bet there are aqua blue vintage cross country skiis out there to add to this front step. It took me about three years to find the blue sled, but I will let you know what I find.

I went to Michael's to get craft foam to help the big one with her Halloween costume. The main character from Hunger Games?

She showed me a picture on-line. Even though I was seriously out of my element in the Firearms department of Gander Mountain, I successful found a bow and arrow quiver. I needed to find a way to keep the arrows in the quiver, so they didn't become actual weapons at the Halloween costume party she is attending later this week.

While there, I discovered that Martha Stewart is now making glitter paint.

I decided to take on another yard decoration. I saw a verison of the instructions on two different blogs, including The Lettered Cottage (on which I could spend a day or two just getting ideas.)

I used: two wreath frames from Michaels and two packages of door shims from Home Depot.

I actually used three packages of shims since I glued the shims on thick-side pointing out the first time, which made the middle of the wreath too large and really messy looking. So I started over with the thin-side pointing out.

We have done a pretty good job of teaching the girls, that when they receive or earn money, it gets divided up into three jars. Save, Share, Spend. One kid doesn't spend a dime and the other one never has a dime. But because I got tired looking at this pile on the spender's closet shelf

We made a quick trip to Ikea (a trip the dad called "clearly just filling time") and I made these jars.

I ran outside in the rain the other night to save these pink ones that were in full bloom. I would have cut more, but I ran into one of the racoons that likes to hang out on our deck each evening. Soon they will need names.

These new little favorite vases (also picked up on the failed deck table trip) from IKEA are perfect too.

Yesterday I went to IKEA to look for the Applaro table for our deck. I have seen it on a couple of blogs and at $129 it seemed like an inexpensive experiment. Our current table is this one,

which is a vintage one from Hunt & Gather. It is cool and folds, which is great, it is however basically an old picnic table that is getting more and more warped and, despite twice a summer coats of polyeurthane, still leaves paint flakes all over our deck. The table was sold out, but I did pick up these glasses

Blue polka dots! We really don't need more glasses, but they are so cute. Earlier in the week I had been looking for these glasses, which are plastic versions of juice glasses we have from Anthropologie, World Market and Pier One. (seen in the table picture above) They are now currently available at Pottery Barn. The plastic ones were written up in Real Simple and are sold out. In the Real Simple weekly email, they were replaced with these from Cambria Cove, which are not as cute.

When I went to empty the dishwasher, one of the juice glasses was broken! And then I saw the Guest Decorator post from Grace Bonney of Design Sponge on Anthropologie. Seagrass striped wicker glasses. I have been tempted by those kind of sweet glasses everytime summer comes around. And these are aqua. Plus my birthday coupon from Anthro just arrived. It is a sign.